Red Lily Princess
by MissHikaHaru
Summary: A man in control of lightning and a woman in control of minds are living together, blissfully unaware of one another's true identity: he a hero, and she a villain. Good and bad collide when friendship turns to romance, and the effect of such debris will begin to burn a valuable bridge. The bridge she blew up, to be specific.
He was a superhero: she was a supervillain. Their relationship should have been really quite simple, but – you must understand – the world is rarely so artless. Another thing you should impress into your mind is that these two were quite unaware of one another's true identity, despite the fact they lived together. Furthermore, each and every day they found themselves always wondering if their living arrangement could become something just a little bit more than platonic.

Of course, I say 'they' but I really mean 'we'. It's always easier to distance yourself from the past if you remove yourself from it entirely. Not to say that I regretted or resented anything to have happened in my life: at least not to the point of trying to deny it ever happened. It was hard sometimes, though, to understand. Even now. That's why I tried to de-personalise the experience, tried to think back to my time with her as critically as I could. She was still so impossible to work out, even after she expressly told me through written proof.

But I wouldn't have her any other way.

Even when I first met her she was different to anything I'd expected of her. She'd just graduated top of her class, with honours, and had shown up at my doorstep with nothing but the black dress clinging to her body and a degree in international law stuffed at the bottom of an oddly bulky leather satchel, her small frame glowing against the midnight rain.

"Takashi Morinozuka?" she asked, gazing up at me with tentative hope.

"Uh…yes?" I answered, running a hand through my messy hair and trying to suppress a yawn. She stood there, strangely serene, with an expectancy in her sparkling brown eyes. When I'd been pulled agitatedly from my bed, almost hoping that I hadn't just heard my doorbell so I could return to sleep, I doubt I could have expected such an out of place young girl, who now glanced down at her small, pale hands. My hazy eyes followed, and I noticed the scrunched up newspaper sticking out from between her fingers.

"I just wanted to ask about your vacancy," she continued, almost seeming to smile despite her bedraggled state. My confusion only deepened at this, and I felt myself frowning. She looked up, and at seeing my expression her face appeared to fall. "It's not already taken, is it?"

"Um, well, no – it's not, but…" I surveyed her with interest, still trying to think why she had turned up in front of my house with absolutely no discernible backstory to her appearance. "I mean, it's the middle of the night. What are you doing here?"

She said nothing. For a moment I thought she was just trying to form an answer, but then she bowed her head and I saw her fists clench almost angrily. Unsure of how to respond, I looked out past her and up and down the street. There was no sign of any other person at all, though the rain was so dense and the sky so dark that it was hard to see much further than fifteen feet either way.

Biting my lip uncertainly, I put a hand on her shoulder in attempt to comfort her. Her dress was soaked through and chilling just to touch.

"Do you want to come inside?" I asked, and she just barely seemed to nod. "Okay…" I ushered her inside, closing the door behind us. Now that she was inside the comparative warmth of the hallway, I could see just how much she was shivering. "You must be frozen – come with me, we'll get you a jumper or something."

"I'm fine," she started, but I already was steering her up the rickety staircase and into my bedroom.

"You're not fine," I said as I clicked on the light switch and set her down on the edge of my bed. I pulled open a drawer and pulled out an overlarge red hoodie, which I put gently into her lap. "Here." She stared at me, seemingly amazed that I was showing her so much charity. I smiled meekly, nodding fractionally as if to encourage her to put it on. She paused, almost suspicious, but then slowly picked up the jumper and held it up. A tiny smile played her small lips.

"Red's my favourite colour," she mumbled, and I straightened up, still surveying her with a mixture of confusion and fascination. She was a person so surprisingly unexpected that I honestly didn't know how to react to her yet, and – even as someone whose job was decidedly unexpected and out of the ordinary – there was something extraordinary about her that just made me want to smile. Perhaps it was her eyes, or the way she spoke, or the words she used. It was hard to put my finger on just one thing to differentiate her from the rest of the mundane population, but there was definitely something about those eyes in particular that made for a certain spark. And sparks, where I was concerned, could very easily become difficult to manage.

I'd barely started to smile at her when the lightbulb in the overhead lamp suddenly glowed very bright, bursting in a small shower of broken glass and a fizzle of electricity. Hastily I grabbed the girl and pulled her away from the shards falling directly above her, but even so I heard a short gasp of pain. In the new darkness of the room I couldn't see what had happened.

"Are you alright?" I asked concernedly, my eyes flashing bright spots from where the bulb had blown before them.

"Fine," she conceded, "I just have a bad leg at the moment."

"Sorry, it's my fault then."

"You didn't know," she assured me gently, and there was something about the sudden softness in her voice that caught me again by surprise. "It's not anyone's fault – besides, it's not like you blew up the light or anything." She laughed, and it was a sound that prickled the hairs at the back of my neck. Or perhaps it was just the sparks that did that. Besides which, it was definitely me that blew up the light: usually I had a good enough stance on my powers to control flashes of electricity, but there were times that I slipped and 'short circuited' as I sometimes called it. There weren't many times – very few indeed, actually – but I'd figured out by now that they only happen when I feel particularly strong emotions, typically negative. This was the first time I'd accidentally lost control because I'd wanted to smile before.

I wasn't sure if this was a good sign or not, or any particular omen pertaining to this mystery girl, but there was no harm in helping her.

"You should probably sit down again," I said, stumbling away from her and reaching around somewhere near knee level for the bedside table carrying my phone, "If your leg's hurting, I mean."

"I'm fine."

"You say that a lot," I commented, fingers closing around my phone and enabling its torch setting. A small section of the room lit up in a cold shaft of light, her large eyes glowing ethereally out of the darkness. "You seem like quite a trooper." She smiled, fully this time. Even looking so unkempt and down on her luck, there was a strong warmth to her smile.

"I suppose I wouldn't mind sitting down," she admitted, shrugging. "Just this once." I nodded, making to lead her to the spare bedroom opposite, but she didn't follow. I stopped on the landing, looking back over my shoulder into the dark room where she stood, strangely silhouetted, with her back to me. I opened my mouth to ask if anything was wrong, but she seemed to sense this and interrupted, "I'll just quickly change, if that's okay."

"Oh – oh, yeah, that's – that's fine."

I quickly turned my head away, hearing the sounds of her peeling the wet fabric from her skin in the near silence. The rain pattered irritably against the window beside me, black and angry down the glass. It became so strangely magnified in the silence that I didn't realise she was ready until I felt her fingers just lightly brush my wrist.

"Alright?" she asked me, as though my distraction had worried her. I was so surprised to hear her voice in my ear, and her oddly warm touch, that I jumped. I turned to see her there, cropped brown hair dripping silently onto the bright red of the jumper that was so large she wore it like a dress. The lightly frayed hem came to just a few inches above her knees, and it was now that I saw the blood. It trailed from a number of gashes upon her right thigh, coiling down like a pack of snakes from beneath her new woollen garment.

"What happened to you?" I gasped, grasping her hand and leading her hurriedly into the spare room, practically dropping her onto the nearby sofa in my haste to see to her. Pulling on the cord of the table lamp beside her, I dropped to my knees to examine the wound. The marks weren't deep, but were surrounded by bruising and what looked like a mass of scrapes, as though she had dragged her leg forcibly from beneath or between a very small space. From the way some of these had welted up I surmised she must have been in a real hurry to free herself. I looked up at her, concern etched across my face, but she seemed to avoid my eyes. "How did you get hurt so badly?"

"It doesn't matter," she replied curtly, twitching her leg slightly away from me almost defensively. "I don't want to talk about it." I shifted back onto my heels, sitting there and watching her curiously. I didn't say anything, and neither did she, and I wondered how she had been so casual at the door with such an injury. She must have realised what a fuss I would make if I saw it, so why then did she change from such a long and disguising dress into something that so blatantly showed it off? She continued to baffle me, and I'd barely known her ten minutes. I didn't even know her name.

Her fingers clenched about the hem of the jumper, white knuckles trembling.

"I won't ask," I said, and she turned her head fractionally to look at me. Again there was that strange surprise in her eyes.

"Funny…" she breathed, fixing me with a questioning gaze. "You ask far fewer questions than I thought you would. Interesting…"

"Excuse me?" I frowned, straightening up a little.

"Never mind," the strange girl muttered, in an oddly dark tone. She quickly relinquished her hold of the jumper's hem and in an instant her hands were cupping my face as if she might kiss me, her large brown eyes boring into mine. Her voice dropped to a whisper, "Forget I said that."

Her words echoed in my ears, and I suddenly felt oddly lightheaded and warm as the sound of the rain died away. My eyes drifted momentarily in and out of focus, as I saw hers glowing brightly with a strange red hue. I was vaguely aware of her fingers trailing softly through my hair, and the sensation made my heartbeat just barely quicken. Unsure of why, I felt my hand rising in front of me and reaching to take hold of her face, but then she seemed to be zooming quickly away from me. I blinked, shaking my head to clear it, and suddenly I was aware again of the raindrops splattering the large window behind her like drops of paint.

Wondering why my hand was hovering statically in the space between us, I turned my eyes on the girl before me. I had the strangest feeling that she had just said something, but for some reason I'd forgotten what it was already.

"Sorry," I grumbled, lowering my hand and mussing up my hair at the back, "Brain fog. What did you just say?"

"I was just introducing myself," she said, giving me a shy sort of smile. "Properly, you know – since we're going to be living together, it's usually a nice place to start."

"Living together?" I repeated, distinctly confused.

"You literally just told me you'd like me to stay," the girl replied, a slight hint of concern in her tone now. I shook my head again, sure there was something I was missing but she seemed so sure that there wasn't. "Maybe you're just tired: it is rather a stupid time of night, I should really have come tomorrow, but – "

"No, no," I assured her, pushing myself to my feet and rubbing at my eyes, which felt oddly heavy. "I believe you."

"I'm glad," she smiled, gazing up at me. I didn't respond, staring down with a look of evident blankness on my face. "My name's Haruhi: since you seem to have already forgotten. Haruhi Fujioka."

"Haruhi…" I said, and she nodded. I paused, thinking that I almost knew that name, but couldn't remember where from. Perhaps I knew her at school, for she appeared to be only a year or two younger than me. It was too late now to bother wondering, for we knew each other now and I couldn't be much plainer that we would very soon know a lot about one another.

"Well, now that you remember who I am," Haruhi said, pushing herself up from the sofa to stand before me, putting most weight on her left leg to avoid the other, "You look like you need some sleep."

"In a minute," I said, shaking my head dismissively, "I want to make sure your leg's okay first. Just sit down again, I'll be right back."

"I'm fine to do it myself!" she called as I left the room and descended the stairs, turning left around the bottom bannister and heading for the kitchen. I retrieved the first aid kit from its place beneath the sink, and hurried back up to the spare bedroom. I found that Haruhi still stood, evidently an extremely stubborn figure: I raised my eyebrows at her, to which she sighed and subjected herself to the clear humiliation of external assistance. She sunk down onto the edge of the squeaky mattress and raised her leg into the air, awaiting my care.

Smiling despite myself at just how strange this girl who had appeared into my life at the ring of a doorbell was to me, I rolled up the long sleeves of my dark grey shirt to my elbows. I took hold of her ankle as I bent down before her, setting her foot on my knee. Retrieving a long, tightly wound bandage from its neat place beside the various disinfectants and plasters alongside it, I let a few rolls uncoil in my lap before taking a spray of antiseptic.

"This may sting a little," I warned her, readying to douse the congealing scars with the acid blue liquid. Unlike most girls I knew, however, she didn't flinch or make any sort of sound as the droplets dusted her skin, seeping into the wounds and frothing unappealingly. I looked up in surprise, seeing her looking back with an intensity in her eyes. She was staring at me, an unidentifiable expression on her face. It was almost like she was trying to figure me out every bit as much as was trying to figure out her. "What?"

"You…" she whispered, starting to frown as if confused. "You're so…good…"

"What do you mean?"

"Only that…" She sighed, drawing her eyes away and staring out the window behind the sofa. I saw the rain reflected in her gaze, and the way the moonlight shone through the droplets made it look almost like she could be crying. "I've never met anyone so willing to help another person… Not for a cost, anyway…" she added bitterly, and for a moment I wanted to ask what she meant, but I didn't think it a pertinent question to pose so soon after meeting her. Instead I set to work winding the bandage about her thigh, doing my best not to disturb the already high-settling hem of the jumper. She didn't say any more while I did this, not making a sound until I had tied the knot just above her knee.

"Thank you," she said softly, and I bowed my head in acknowledgement of her thanks. I closed the small kit box and rose to my feet, and her gaze followed me up.

"How do you feel now?" I asked, and she just touched at the bandages lightly with one of her small hands. An uncertain smile was at the corner of her mouth as she looked back up at me.

"I'm fine."


End file.
